After September 11, 2001, U.S. officials authorized the cruel treatment and torture of prisoners held in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and the CIA's secret prisons overseas.

This database documents the U.S. government's official experiment with torture. At present, the database contains well over 100,000 pages of government documents obtained primarily through Freedom of Information Act litigation and requests filed by the ACLU, and through litigation of Salim v. Mitchell, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of the survivors and the family of a dead victim of the CIA torture program. To learn more about the database, please read the About and Search Help pages. If you're a developer, you can also access this data through our API.

This cable provides a report of day 4 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 7, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and insult slaps ...

This cable provides a report of day 5 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 8, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...

This cable provides a report of day 6 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 9, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...

This is a general report on a cycle of interrogation carried out on August 10, 2002 on detainee Abu Zubaydah. It includes an overview of techniques used (including the waterboard, walling, hooding, and cramped confinement), in addition to brief ...

This cable provides a report of day 8 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 11, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, and hooding in ...

This cable provides a report of day 9 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 12, 2002. It includes details of interrogators using a combination of waterboarding, walling, cramped confinement, hooding, and ...

This cable provides a report of day 12 of the cycle of interrogation carried out on detainee Abu Zubaydah on August 15, 2002. Though large portions of this report are redacted, it includes details of interrogators using a combination of ...

Almost entirely redacted document entitled "Proposal for an enhanced interrogation strategy in the War on Terrorism." The only page which is not entirely redacted is an outline of the team responsible for Abu Zubaydah's interrogation.

This is a memo detailing the visit of a three-person behavioral interrogation team's visit to Abu Zubaydah's holding compound and "evolving" interrogation room. It includes details of the team's suggestions for cell modifications, including "the ...

This is a memo from the CIA which describes the month-long custody and interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaydah and requests comments from Alec/HQs "on establishing the priority focus of the ongoing interrogations of Abu Zubaydah".

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